Are we hurrying things up or are we massively delayed?

Mamta's yesterday statement - "I have just come to know through media that Central Government has notified FDI in retail today. Is it ethical, moral and democratic for a minority government to issue Government order forcefully and hurriedly, when massive protest against it is taking place across the country?"

Mamta says government is going about notifying FDI in retail in a hurry. Oh really! I thought we are already delayed by many decades. What other Asian countries achieved many decades earlier, we are still struggling to get to, and she says we are hurrying it.

We can't wait another 10 years for next set of economic reforms, we are already late. We will waste an entire generation, if we continue to deliberate and dither. Think of a young woman of 20 yrs, graduating from college this year, if new opportunities are delayed by 10 years or even 5 years, those opportunities are lost for her. 

I remember in early '90s, when we were still studying, computer adoption had just began. Anti computerization protests were regular, organized by public sector bank employees, unions, other government establishments, actively supported by the then political outfits in opposition.Imagine if we had succumbed to the pressure and software /IT had not taken its roots in India, where each one of us would have landed. That opportunity, even if it had come 5 years later, would have been a lost opportunity for my generation, because we would have gotten into different jobs, whatever other jobs were available at that time.

Life is constantly moving, we have to move faster than that to make some visible improvements to the present lives of the people vs being ok bringing the progress over many lifetimes. I don't think notifications are hurried, on the contrary, I think they are already way too late.

Cutting the nose to spite the face

If there is one word for the phrase "Cutting the nose to spite the face" it is "Bandh".  Who loses the most - the weakest in the society - daily wage earners. They just won't earn anything on this day. They have to depend on their savings, if any, to scrape through. Common man is the next, as the factories shutdown, they produce less and the produce gets costlier, we don't feel it immediately, but that is the net effect. However, Bandhs do not just mean stopping activity, it is in fact a license to destroy what we have. Bandhs are not considered successful until, a few buses and trains are burned, few shops are looted,  pitched battles are fought with the police, a few firing incidents happen. Band is historic when a few die! Netajis on their part court arrest. They are very respectfully taken in special police vehicles and put behind bars. They are fed and then given a drop to their residences before their favorite prime time serial starts in the evening.

Government registers a case of sedition against the cartoonists for disrespecting the national symbols. What about the netas and political establishment that disrespects the humans and takes away from them their lively hood.

Estimated loss to the economy because of today's Bandh - Rs2000 crore. If we add up all the losses that the country has suffered because of negative political activism till date, it will put to shame all the losses from all the scams put together.